Welcome to the Book Nook! The weekly thread for all book nerds on The Avocado. This is the place to talk about books you’re currently reading, discuss genres, ask for recommendations, and post serious literary criticism.
This week’s prompt: Tomorrow is Halloween, when ghosts walk. What are your favorite fiction or nonfiction books, stories, essays, plays or poems about real, fake or metaphorical ghosts and haunted houses?
Ideas for prompts are always welcome!
Today’s literary birthdays:
Paul Pellison (1624), French historian (RIP 1693)
Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis (1712), Maltese linguist and historian (RIP 1770)
Richard Brinley Sheridan (1751), Irish-English playwright and poet (RIP 1816)
Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (1786), Canadian novelist (RIP 1871)
Paul Valéry (1871), French poet, essayist and philosopher (RIP 1945)
Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881), American novelist and poet (RIP 1941)
Ezra Pound (1885), American poet and critic (RIP 1972)
Zoe Akins (1886), American playwright and poet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (RIP 1958)
Sukumar Ray (1887), Bengali children’s author (RIP 1923)
Ruth Gordon (1896), American playwright and memoirist (RIP 1985)
Kostas Karyotakis (1896), Greek poet, (RIP 1928)
Miguel Hernández (1910), Spanish poet and playwright (RIP 1942)
Minni Nurme (1917), Estonian poet, novelist and translator (RIP 1994)
Gloria Oden (1923), American poet (RIP 2011)
Jean Chapman (1929), British romance writer
Robert Caro (1935), American biographer, two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography
Ágota Kristóf (1935), Hungarian (lived in Switzerland, wrote in French) novelist, short story writer, playwright and poet (RIP 2011)
Morris Lurie (1938), Australian novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright and children’s author (RIP 2014)
Paul Claes (1943), Flemish poet
Humayun Kabir Dhali (1964), Bengali novelist, short story writer and children’s author
Joshua Jay (1981), American author of books on stage magic
Feel free to comment about any of these folks, and/or let us know if I missed somebody.
Posting pictures is fine as long as they are book related, but I would like this thread to continue to be a NO GIF/YouTube/social media embed zone as much as possible. Thanks, and happy commenting!